EOMA/PCMCIA Laptop Motherboard

A Laptop's motherboard is almost identical to that of a tablet, with the exception that a keyboard matrix and a mouse driver are required instead of a touch panel. In some cases, the keyboard matrix and mouse driver are handled as USB devices: however, the cost can be lowered by utilising available pins of an STM32F, which has enough functionality to cover, in software, the majority of functions that would otherwise require individual discrete circuits. Source code for an example mouse driver can be found here: [1].

Additionally, there is a GPLv3 STM32 Library. Uwe Hermann describes a number of Software Libre Tools which are available that assist in the programming of STM32F devices. Also the OLPC OpenEC Project has pre-existing firmware source code which can be ported and adapted, saving several man-months of development effort.

For single-channel LVDS screens, an SN75LVDS83b can be used; for Dual-channel LVDS screens, a DS90C387A can be used, setting the "DUAL" pin to "1/2" mode, prompting it to enter a mode where only one set of the 24-pin inputs is used but the output is split across two sets of LVDS outputs (odd and even pixels).